Recently in Employment Law Category

As the nation gears up to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee next weekend, businesses up and down the country are scratching their heads over their employees' right to the extra bank holiday, scheduled for Tuesday 5th June.

Amidst the confusion, lawyers and HR experts have been busy publishing their legal advice for employers.

The most salient point is that employees have no legal 'right' to the extra day off unless it is written into their employment contract. Similarly employers are not obliged to offer extra pay unless such a provision is made in the employment contract.

Prison officers have been threatened with legal action for holding protest meetings after some 400,000 public sector employees took to the streets of Westminster to complain about austerity measures and pension changes taken by the Government.

Off-duty police officers, university lecturers and border-control staff joined teachers and nurses in walking up Millbank to the Houses of Parliament.

Meanwhile protest meetings were taking place at 80% of the country's prisons according to the Prison Officers Association (POA). They said that they would continue until they were called off by the union's national executive.

Two hundred UK-based staff at US law firm Dewey and LeBoeuf are waiting to hear of their fate after the firm's catastrophic meltdown across the pond put all their jobs in jeopardy.

A crisis-management team is now discussing the options for the London office of the international firm which is based in the City. The team, headed by London managing partner Peter Sharp, is considering a range of options including partnering with a rival, winding up the LLP in the UK or entering administration.

Dewey employed 110 lawyers in London at the end of March this year, including 35 partners, and also employed 85 support staff.

Two recent rulings by the UK's highest court have left employers wondering where they stand on age discrimination and contractual terms.

The first of the two cases concerned a solicitor, Leslie Seldon. Mr Seldon was a partner in a small local firm. He sued his employer under age-discrimination legislation after they enforced a clause in the partnership agreement which stated that he must give up his position after the passing of his 65^th birthday.

The second case heard by the Supreme Court concerned Terence Horner. Mr Horner is a former police officer, working as a legal adviser to the Police National Legal Database.

Judges sitting in the highest appellate court in the land have rejected an appeal by a lawyer who claims that he was forced to retire at 65.

The ruling paves the way for businesses to justify compulsory retirement for older employees based on specific grounds.

In what has been described as the most significant age-discrimination case for years, the Supreme Court upheld the decision of Clarkson, Wright and Jakes law firm to retire one of its partners, Leslie Seldon.

On 6 April 2012 the qualifying period for a claim for unfair dismissal doubled, from one year to two years, creating a huge increase in the risk of job loss for millions of workers, according to the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

The TUC believe that the new law will negatively impact on some 2.7 million people working in temporary and part-time jobs across the UK who begin employment on or after 6^th April 2012. Previously, the law permitted claims for unfair dismissal after just one year.

The change has come as part of a broader review of employment legislation being conducted by the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) in accordance with the stated aims of the coalition agreement.

The NASUWT teachers' union will issue a legal challenge to the Government over its plans to reform public sector pensions.

The union, which is the largest representing teachers in the UK, argues that the Government should have valued the current Teachers' Pensions Scheme before making any changes.

The move will deal a blow to Government hopes that the matter was drawing to a close.

The Employment Relations Minister Edward Davey has announced plans to fund two pilot schemes aimed at bringing alternative dispute resolution into employment disputes.

The schemes, which will run in Manchester and Cambridge, will allow small and medium-sized businesses the opportunity to participate in mediation-networks to help them settle employment disputes quicker and for less money.

The announcement comes off the back of figures which show that there were a staggering 218,000 claims made by employees against employers last year. Each claim costs a small business around £4,000 to defend, and the court system costs the taxpayer some £84m to run.

The Government's plan to cut red tape for micro businesses has been branded a gimmick, after it was revealed that in the past year firms employing fewer than ten staff were not exempt from a single regulation. The claim was made by the head of regulatory affairs at the Institute of Directors, Alexander Ehmann.

"It's the Emperor's New Clothes. The moratorium exists, but it hasn't been applied to anything. Unless it is applied, it is meaningless," he said.

The Government introduced the scheme in April 2011, saying that it would relieve the burden of red tape on businesses employing fewer than ten people. The move was designed to try to boost innovation in the small business sector, which it was hoped would help carry the UK out of recession and into growth.

A leading City employment lawyer has warned that banks will be hit by a series of legal claims if they press ahead with plans to limit or even deny some staff their annual bonus.

The claim comes as British banks take stock of 2011 and start the process of deciding the levels of bonus payments to be made in 2012.

It has been a poor year for the share prices of many of the country's biggest banks, and this despite all of them announcing healthy profits.

The next twelve months will see several major changes in employment law and businesses are being advised to get acquainted with these changes, or risk falling foul of new legislation in 2012. Here is a chronological guide to some of the major changes:

February

On the 1^st of the month the maximum weekly pay used to calculate statutory redundancy will increase from £400 to £430, and the maximum unfair dismissal compensation award will increase from £68,400 to £72,300.

Young people often don't think too much about pensions when there are so many other, more immediate, things to be concerned with such as getting on the property ladder, forging their careers or starting families.

But changes to state pensions mean that workers in their twenties and thirties now cannot be entirely certain when they will be able to claim their state pension: it could be as late as in their seventies, and so Liberal Democrat minister Steve Webb has warned young workers to start planning for their retirement.

Mr Webb claimed that it would be unfair to give young people an exact age for retirement since this could potentially change in the coming years. He said: "I don't think any government can be precise. The alternative is spurious accuracy, to say exactly what their pension age will be."

Birmingham City Council has lost an appeal to prevent 174 female former-employees from taking their equal-pay claim to the High Court, which may result in the council paying out millions of pounds in compensation.

While equal-pay claims are normally heard at employment tribunals and can only take place within six months of the employee leaving their job, the High Court allows employment cases to be heard up to six years after the employment has ended.

This has allowed the 174 women to bring their claim for back pay, which runs to about £3 million, and potentially opens the gates for thousands of other female former-employees to make claims.

In what is thought to be the "biggest action since the 1926 general strike", millions of public sector workers plan to strike tomorrow, Wednesday 30 November, after an agreement about pensions could not be reached with the Government.

The industrial action, occurring nationwide, are to be co-ordinated by the Trade Union Congress and will involve around 50 branches of 30 unions, seven of which are not affiliated with the TUC. The unions will represent 2.6 million workers from different public sector industries including hospital workers and teachers.

The recently proposed changes to pensions such as extending the state pension age, forcing workers to pay more from their salaries into their pensions, making them work longer hours and forcing them to accept pensions based on "career average salaries" rather than final salaries, are the reasons behind the strike action.

Despite unpaid internships being a topic of contention for the past few years, with several cases of interns suing for lack of payment in various industries, it seems that MPs are guilty of regularly taking on interns for long periods without paying them and therefore breaking minimum wage laws.

The House of Commons website Work for MP shows that there have been 260 unpaid internships offered since the election, some lasting as long as 10 months without even providing expenses.

National minimum wage must be paid to anyone who is classed as a 'worker'. According to legal advice provided internally to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills ministers, "most interns are likely to be workers, and therefore entitled to the NMW."